1. Description of Related Art
The present invention relates to a transportation crew dispatch method, and especially to a transportation crew dispatch method based on one day business.
2. Description of Related Art
The transportation crew can be classified as cockpit crew for driving a carrier driver and cabin crew for providing service to passengers. The duty dispatch is different due to the duties to be executed. As assigning duties, different factors are taken into consideration. The work of the cabin crew is to provide services to the passengers. Therefore, the confinement of the cabin crew is the carriers or members of a line, duty time, work days, rest time, working partners, number of members for waiting a duty, and others. The fairness of assigning duties to cabin crew is the main concerns, for example the fairness of number of times of working in special lines, number of times of holidays, number of times of waiting duties, number of times of non-local lodging, meal fee, duty hours, etc. The primary work of the cockpit crew is to protect the carrier in a safety condition, and thus, the responsibility of the driver is heavier than the cabin crew. More confinements are required for the cockpit crew. Other than above items, the duty hours, training times, certifications, and certifications for special lines of the drivers are important items to be considered. The fairness of the cockpit crew's duty is less important than that of the cabin crew, only items such as non-local lodging, times of entering into or leaving from a duty, and carrier driving time are taken into consideration.
In general, to reduce the complexity of a problem, the scheduling of a transportation office is cut into two major parts: one is the crew pairing problem, and the other is the crew rostering problem. The definition of the former item is the transportation duties that a member starts from a station to provide services in different flights according to the flight table and based on the confinement of minimum rest time, and finally the member returns to the station. However, a crew pairing problem based on a single day business is different slightly. Because one day is used as a based to assign duties to the members and the flying time is not long, it is definitely not to cut from a station to a station in assigning a duty. Generally, the convenience for executing the duty of next day and for positioning (PNC) are main concerns. Namely, when the members must work at different stations, the crew pairing can not determine which station is used as a base station. Some duties require the members to lodge overnight for executing the next day duty. To maintain the flexibility of assigning duties to crews, it is unsuitable to fix this duty to some duty combination. Therefore, station to station problem occurs in scheduling. However, this problem is induced after assigning a duty, not resulting from the duty.
In addition, in order to increase the efficiency of the carriers, the time interval in the schedule based on a single day business is not long enough for the crews to change the carrier duties. Therefore, the variation of the duty combination is less that that of a general duty combination. As a matter of fact, a duty combination based on a single day business can be produced in about 10 minutes. The difference is illustrated in the following table 1 and table 2.
TABLE 1General result of dutiesDuty A:Taipei −> Hong Kong −> Taipei −>Tokyo > TaipeiDuty B:Taipei −> Los Angeles −> Taipei −>Hong Kong −> TaipeiDate1      2      3      4      Crew 1Taipei −> Los Angeles −> Taipei −> Hong Kong −> TaipeiTaipei is the base station
TABLE 2Crew pairing based on one day business (Taipei, Kaohsiung are a basestations, Lodging at Tainan)Original Flight Connection TableCarrier 1:Taipei −> Taitung −> Taipei −> Kaohsiung −> Taipei −> Kingmen −>Taipei −> Taitung −> Taipei −> Kingmen −> KaohsiungCarrier 2:Tainan −> Taipei −> Taitung −> Taipei −> Kaohsiung −> Taipei −>KaohsiungCarrier 3:Kaohsiung −> Taipei −> Taitung −> Taipei −> Kaohsiung −>Taipei −> TainanCarrier 1 takes Taipei as a point to cutDuty A:Taipei −> Taitung −>duties to generate duty A and B.Taipei −> Kaohsiung −>Carriers 2 and 3 are kept in the sameTaipei −> Kingmen −> Taipeistate to generate duty C and DDuty B:Taipei −> Taitung −>Taipei −> Kingmen −>KaohsiungDuty C:Tainan −> Taipei −>Taitung −> Taipei−>Kaohsiung −> Taipei −>KaohsiungDuty D:Kaohsiung −> Taipei −>Taitung −> Taipei −>Kaohsiung −> Taipei −>Tainandate123DescriptionCrew 1Duty BDuty DDuty CThe base of crew 1 is Taipei,LOVPNC 2LOV is a number forPNC 1overnight at, for example,Tainan. PNC 2 means thatafter the crews leave fromthe duty, PNC returns to thebase.Crew 2Duty DDuty CDuty AThe base of the crew 2 isLOVPNC 2Kaohsiung. PCN 1 means thatbefore the crew enters intothe duty, the crew movesfrom the base (PCN) to theplace for entering into a duty.PNC 2 means that afterthe crews leave from theduty, PNC returns to thebase
It is known from above comparison that in the stage of forming duties, the crew duty generation problem based on daily business can not resolve the continuation of the working places of the crews in advance. These problems such as continuation of working places of the crews, entering into or leaving from a duty, non-local lodging, or minimum rest time can be resolved when the dispatching of the duty is performed.
In dispatching duties to crews, in general, the confinement of scheduling, skeleton activities, and certifications are taken into consideration so as to distribute the holiday of a crew and the combination of the duty. Therefore, the line of work of each crew is generated so as to determine the duty table and holiday schedule of a crew in the scheduled time interval. The minimum rest time (generally, one day) is formed in the duty. Therefore, in the dispatch of a duty to a crew, it is only necessary to consider the indicator of fairness, while the defects are: (1) the problem of dispatching crews between several stations can not be well processed; (2) If there are many flights, the schedule predetermined will be destroyed dramatically so as to induce a difficulty in the dispatch of crews; (3) The duties predetermined may reduce the cost of entering into or leaving from a duty. However, the flexibility of dispatching crews is lower than that based on a single day business. Thereby, more crews are necessary for a duty. The assignment of duty based on a single day business is to determine whether the minimum rest time is sufficient, whether the continuation of arriving place is correct, whether the duty time is over, whether the holiday is sufficient, and whether the crew is certified based on the daily duty time and the arriving time for the duty of next day. Therefore, the defects of the business schedule being programmed based on weeks will not occur. However, the operation time of the algorithm is larger. The following table shows the difference between the duty assignments based on daily business and week business.
TABLE 3Comparing itemsBased on one dayBased on one weekScheduling BasisOne dayOne weekItems to be1.Multiple stations1.One stationconsidered2.Number of run-2.Time table of driving,about dutiesningminimum rest time,of crews3.Updating to otherconfinement of holi-carrier being dif-day, etc.ficult3.Update carrier for ex-ecuting a dutyItems to be1.The former duty1.Only fairness beingconsideredstationconsideredabout2.Entering into or2.Fixed rest timeassigningleaving from aduties toduty, non-localcrewslodging, andminimum resttime.3.Combination of apredeterminedactivities.4.The number ofmembers for aduty.5.FairnessDefects1.Longer operation1.Low efficiency fortimedispatching crews2.Difficult in processingthe problem that themembers are placed inmany stations.3.Unsuitable to theschedules with a largevariation.4.The combination ofpredetermined activ-ities and duties is notconsidered5.Many crews required
Accordingly, the conventional transportation crew dispatch method is not satisfactory and there is a need to have a novel method to o mitigate and/or obviate the aforementioned problems.